Mesirow hires Paul Arnold to lead investment solutions

Mesirow Wealth Management has hired Paul Arnold, formerly global head of multi-asset research at Morningstar Investment Management, to the newly created role of managing director and head of investment solutions. The Chicago firm announced the appointment on Oct. 6, giving Arnold oversight of strategic asset allocation, manager research and due diligence, portfolio construction, and the development of proprietary investment products.

Arnold brings more than two decades in investment management, most of it in multi-asset portfolio construction and research, and at Morningstar Investment Management he was lead portfolio manager for the firm's ETF, active-passive and ESG asset-allocation managed portfolio series, overseeing a team that managed more than $10 billion. Mesirow CEO Brian D. Price called the hire an important step in building an investment platform for the firm's advisors and clients, citing Arnold's experience in research, portfolio construction and due diligence as a differentiator, while Arnold framed the move as a chance to keep translating research into strategies clients can use.

The numbers make the hire look less like recruiting than a manufacturing decision. Mesirow Wealth Management is employee-owned, has been ranked a Barron's Top 100 RIA Firm for five consecutive years, and reports roughly $14 billion in assets under management and advisement as of March 31, 2026; Morningstar Investment Management reports $87.8 billion in regulatory assets and 267 employees. Drawing a senior multi-asset leader out of a manager that large suggests Mesirow wants the asset-allocation and manager-selection layer in its own hands, tuned for its advisors and wealth clients rather than purchased from a third party.

The firm has been widening on other fronts since September 2023, when it acquired Chicago-based Front Barnett Associates, an RIA with more than $1.2 billion in client assets at the time of the deal, added Florida-based Price Wealth Management the following year, and more recently acquired LeafHouse Financial Advisors. Hiring has moved in parallel: as PWD reported on Sept. 30, Mesirow hired Mark Nichol, in the same story in which Carson Group added a $120 million Ohio team from Commonwealth Financial Services.

The heaviest phrase in the announcement is proprietary investment solutions, and Mesirow gives no timetable for it. If Arnold's group turns out strategies bearing Mesirow's name, the firm's pitch to advisory teams gains a product argument to set beside its $14 billion of assets; if the work stays behind existing models as manager research, the hire is an infrastructure upgrade. The Oct. 6 announcement does not say which it will be.